


keep your swords out by your sides

by friendly_ficus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, disturbing nightmare stuff, fjord's patron is otherworldly and also is not very nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:03:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: “Provoke,” Jester says cheerfully over Avantika’s eyeless corpse.(Or: Fjord and bad dreams.)





	keep your swords out by your sides

**Author's Note:**

> Matt: *thoughtfully decides when fjord will have dreams from his patron*  
> Me: but what if fjord is just really bad at remembering his dreams and has them all the time? what then?  
> (Also, mind the tags.)

  “Provoke,” Jester says cheerfully over Avantika’s eyeless corpse. She’s got the captain’s jacket on over her dress and it’s dripping blood from the hem, smearing against her blue calves. The room smells of ocean and that familiar iron smell, and death.

  “I... Jester,  _ what?” _

  She laughs, bright and happy, and gestures him over. Distantly, he feels himself approaching, walking with a smooth confidence that he doesn’t feel.

  Avantika’s body lays on the planks of the floor, neck bent at a terrible angle that Fjord remembers well enough. But her eyes, that watched him with intelligence and calculation and manipulation and something like kinship, her eyes are gone. The empty sockets stare at him out of her dead face.

  “Provoke,” Jester orders more insistently, and Fjord steps over Avantika. He’s close enough for Jester to set her palm flat against his chest, right where the sphere went in way back in Labenda. 

  He gasps when she digs her nails in deep, somehow through his armor, through his  _ skin.  _ Jester’s face contorts in some alien emotion, something like satisfaction but also like rage, and her eyes change. Unable to move, Fjord stares into the glowing yellow irises that get brighter and brighter, filling his vision.

  Then he’s floating again, deep in the sea in front of one massive eye. Uk’otoa’s voice reverberates through the water around him, making it all thick and heavy and drowning.

**“Provoke.”**

  Fjord wakes up; he forgets.

\---

  Sometimes he runs back over conversations he’s had, in the dreams. Sometimes they’re not entirely new, but something’s  _ off, _ just not right.

  Beau’s beat to shit this morning, covered in bruises with a truly spectacular shiner and something wrong with her wrist but a satisfied grin stretching across her face. All seven of them sit around a table at the Nestled Nook, way back in Trostenwald. 

  Looking out the window, all he can see is waves stretching out in all directions. He smells the sea under the scent of the breakfast fare, and hears the water. The inn rocks gently beneath them like a ship.

  “You get horsekicked?” 

  She tilts her head in his direction, answers, “Potential.”

  The floor creaks ominously, splits in a few places. Water begins gushing in, ankle deep within moments. The rest of the group doesn’t seem to notice.

  The next sentence comes out on autopilot, quiet under the sound of the ocean around them. “Damn, how’s the horse look?”

  “Potential,” Beau repeats, as the water comes up to his chest and the rest of the group fades away. Dark water rises higher but he can’t quite bring himself to move from the chair, from Beau’s considering gaze. The ocean swallows them both.

  They both stand in the Diver’s Grave, not far from Dashilla’s lair. Beau’s sashes and belts move on their own, slowly responding to the currents of the water. Red seaweed floats between the two of them, obscuring her face.

  Fjord reaches up slowly to push the plant aside - it curls around his hand hungrily, stinging. Beau’s hand shoots out from between the leaves and grips his shoulder hard, pulling him forward into the seaweed. It stings his face and neck and arms, leaves little clouds of red in the water. 

  “Beau, what’s going on, I don’t understand.”

  She snarls, pulling him further into the tangle of seaweed. Tendrils of it wrap around his body, immobilizing him, covering everything but his eyes.

  The fronds that covered her face shrivel up and float away, as Uk’otoa’s eye suddenly floats behind her, making Beau nothing more than another underwater shadow.

**“Potential.”** The seaweed devours him, poison burning through his veins and all the vulnerable organs he keeps within his armor.  **“Potential.”**

  Fjord wakes up; he forgets.

\---

  Avantika runs a hand through his hair, grins at him with that sated look in her eyes, sure of her own power. He never said it, but she’s glorious like this, and he wants her and he wants her and he  _ hates  _ her. He hates her for keeping information from him, hates her for getting her hand in the divot in the temple floor, hates her for knowing Vandren and trying to kill Vandren. 

  He growls at her contentment, her complacency; she really thinks she has him, now. And she might, she might have that part of him that is always hungry, always drowning, always trying to kill her.

  She’s beautiful and powerful and he wants her and he wants her dead before she kills him. He summons the falchion and shoves it into her gut, pinning her to the bed. Avantika’s expression doesn’t change at all, even as her lifeblood seeps out into the sheets.

  Then he’s standing with the rest of his crew as the Plank King hoists her into the air, one hand around her throat. Blood pours from her side in a steady stream, splattering onto the docks and running towards his feet. The crowd is hazy, indistinct. Even the Plank King is hard to make out. The red of the blood gleams brightly.

  She meets his gaze, eyes bright with hatred and pride, and manages with what little air is in her lungs: “Reward.”

  The  _ snap  _ of her neck echoes in his ears.

  Then he’s standing in an alley in Port Damali, near enough to the docks to hear the waves. A storm boils in the sky above him and the rain falls in sheets. Seawater and tiny drops of crimson splatter across his shoulders from the sky.

  Sabian snarls at him wordlessly, tries to twist away but Fjord is faster, stronger. The falchion is almost weightless in his hands as he stabs it into Sabian’s chest, carving to the heart. The other man twitches futilely, stilling. Fjord tastes sea spray and blood. 

  “Reward,” the rattle of Sabian’s last breath says.

  The eye in the pommel of the falchion shifts to look at Fjord’s face, and he falls into it.

**“Reward.”** Uk’otoa’s voice declares, as he falls.

  Fjord wakes up; he forgets.

\---

  Molly shuffles the cards in his hands absently, not reading the future or anything just... fidgeting. The embers of the campfire glow gently, not giving off quite enough light to illuminate the rest of the Nein.

  The vast, empty plains they’re traveling stretch out as far as the eye can see, bleached pale under the moon. Fjord stares out at them until his eyes burn with the need to blink.

  One of Mollymauk’s many pieces of jewelry clinks against another. The sound of the cards shuffling stops. His red eyes watch Fjord watch the grasses move. He sighs impatiently.

  “You died,” Fjord replies tiredly. “It was my fault.”

  “Watching.” Molly’s voice sounds just the same as ever, kind but with an edge of mocking.

  “I’m tired of this dream.”

  At his side, Molly fans out the cards in a universal ‘pick a card, any card’ gesture. Fjord reaches out a hand and selects one at random. When he flips it over, it’s not any tarot he’s seen before. Scales slide past each other in the image, almost seeming to move in the faint light. The edge of the card cuts his hand, a line of pain across his palm.

  He looks up, looking for an explanation but Molly isn’t there anymore, he’s on the ground with a glaive stuck in his chest. Blood bubbles from his lips, but his eyes are still and deep. 

  “Watching,” he breathes, and dies.

  The eyes among his tattoos glow, faintly at first but then a blinding, searing yellow. Fjord tries to look away but the rushing sound of water fills his ears and a tidal wave crashes across the plains, sweeping him away.

**“Watching.”** His patron’s voice shakes his skull as Fjord tries to breathe but he’s drowning, he’s dying, he’s gone.

  Fjord wakes up; he forgets.

\---

  Yasha meets his gaze in the silent field, Jester fading away beside him. There’s absolutely no noise as the Iron Shepherds fall on them, as they try to fight and fail. She shouldn’t be able to speak, there wasn’t any sound at all, but as they’re chained and dragged to the carts she meets his eyes and says, “Patience.” He blinks, and they’re somewhere new.

  Molly’s coat flaps in the breeze, hanging on the post that marks his grave. Yasha turns her face to the sky and her wings shoot out like lightning, a storm swirling above them. The snow falls thick and fast but it changes, grows warmer and falls as rain and it’s the same storm, Fjord knows somehow, it’s the same storm from the day Vandren’s ship sank.

  Yasha looks at him with solid black eyes, her ghostly wings sizzling when the rain hits them. Her voice is low and full of power when she says, “Patience.” He blinks again.

  The temple is filling with water, shaking apart around them as his patron begins shedding old bindings. Avantika’s hand is bleeding as she runs ahead of him, just out of reach. She’s got it all, power and a loyal crew and Uk’otoa’s favor and it  _ burns  _ in Fjord, the need to have what she has. Answers, more than anything, are what he seeks and she just  _ took  _ one from him.

  Yasha slices a snake person in half, ignoring where the blood splatters across her face. “Patience,” she reminds him yet again.

_ “Balgura,”  _ Fjord calls, beckoning the demon into the world. It falls on the Squall-Eater, tearing at Vera and the rest of them. Yasha draws her sword and pats his shoulder briefly, stepping into the fray.

  “Patience,” she mutters to herself as he steps away with Caleb - 

  Instead of landing on the docks he is plunged directly into the water, a tentacle around his ankles dragging him down into the depths.

**“Patience.”** A red-haired woman floats, limp in the water in front of Uk’otoa’s eye.

  Fjord wakes up; he forgets.

\---

  “Learn,” Caleb mutters into the wire on the deck of the Squall-Eater, “learn.”

  “Just so,” Fjord replies, because Avantika will never let him go, not ever, not until he can make her.

  The sun is high in the clear sky, beating down on the deck of the ship. The heat of it sears the wood around them.

  Caleb makes a motion with his hands and a wall of flames erupts between them and Avantika, and he turns and catches Fjord’s eyes. “Learn,” he repeats. 

  Fire fills Fjord’s vision, reds and oranges and golden yellow. When the light dies down, he’s in the High Richter’s house in Zadash, holding the falchion at Caleb’s throat.

_ “Choose,”  _ he orders in Vandren’s voice.

  “Learn,” Caleb counters, walking back in the direction of the stairs. He pats Fjord on the shoulder almost absently, and where his hand touched Fjord feels a spark catch, pain curling over his skin like a lazy cat. He flinches away from it, stumbling, and falls through the back window - 

  They’re sitting in what Fjord imagines to be a wizard’s study, plush chairs and a roaring fireplace surrounded by books. A large painting of a seascape dominates the mantle. Caleb stares into the flames, reaches out a hand and plucks a sphere of light from them. It glows white-hot, and the smell of burning skin fills the room.

  There’s a teacup in Fjord’s hand and he can’t seem to put it down to reach Caleb, so he drinks. Ocean brine and saltwater fill his mouth, continuing to pour from the cup long after he’s put it down, bubbling up over the sides. The water slithers over the floor, douses the flames and rises until it hits the orb in Caleb’s hand and starts fizzing away into steam.

  Caleb doesn’t react at all except for a downward tug on one side of his mouth. “Learn,” he instructs, shoving the ball of molten light into Fjord’s chest.

  He crumbles to bones against Fjord, swept away by the current from the rising water. Fjord’s chest  _ aches  _ suddenly, like the thing is devouring him from within. The painting above the fireplace wavers when the water hits it, a veneer washing away. 

  Uk’otoa’s twisting form watches him with nine eyes, gleaming through the mess of water and ash and bones.

**“Learn.”**

  Fjord wakes up; he forgets.

\---

  Caduceus hums as he rattles around the ship’s kitchen, tossing things into a pot and stirring. Fjord is seated on a barrel, holding an empty stone bowl. Strange designs are etched into the sides of it, three creatures chasing each other. The smell of the hearty stew is almost enough to cover the ever-present salt in the air.

  The stone bowl transfixes Fjord, a long scratch down the middle of the base that makes it look almost like an eye, watching. Then it’s covered when Caduceus leans over and ladles stew in. Fjord looks up at him.

  “Consume,” he prompts. 

  Fjord begins to eat. Caduceus turns back to the pot and continues to hum.

  “Y’know, this is normally a lot worse. The dreams, I mean.”

  One of the firbolg’s shoulders shrugs. He reaches over and runs a hand along the wall of the ship. From his touch, mushrooms begin sprouting.

  Fjord finishes his stew and goes back to staring into the bowl. The remnants of the liquid make the stone wet and shiny, looking like - 

  Beneath the waves, Fjord draws his falchion across his hand and feeds his blood to the altar. Beside him, Caduceus makes an angry noise and tugs him away with surprising strength. He jabs Fjord in the chest.

 “Consume,” he insists, and Fjord’s gaze flickers to where the sphere previously was. Something he can’t quite look at is sitting on Dashilla’s throne, something with scales and eyes and constant movement.

**“Consume,”** Uk’otoa orders, and Dashilla sinks a clawed hand through his back.

  Fjord wakes up; he forgets.

\---

  Nott was never on Vandren’s ship, not when it still sailed in the waking world. Still, she’s there on the night of the storm, watching him without her mask on.

  There’s no time to interrogate her, though, because if he can just be a little faster he can catch Sabian before any of it happens, before the explosion and the ship sinking and, well, everything. Fjord heads below decks and Nott follows in his shadow.

  “You should draw a weapon,” he suggests, “Sabian is tricky.”

  “Grow,” she tells him, sounding irritated.

  Time speeds up, Sabian puts a dagger in his chest and races up above decks. Lightning flashes outside, briefly letting light in through the doorway. A fuse burns brightly and Fjord turns to run upstairs. Nott continues to follow silently. 

  The explosion throws him into the sea, into the storm, into the future; the manacles are heavy on his wrists and Jester is terrifyingly silent, has been silent since that slaver cast some spell to make her sleep. The cart rocks as their cage is moved across great distances.

  A storm crashes outside, lightning and the sound of sailors shouting, but Fjord is bound and silent and can’t see anything through the tarp that’s been thrown over the cages. He smells the ocean.

  On the other side of the bars, Nott the Brave watches him with considering eyes. “Grow,” she says, and the bars of the cage begin to rust and wear away, metal going brittle and weak.

  The walls are stone as Fjord slams his shoulder against the weakening door of the cell in Lorenzo’s basement over and over again. He breaks the sodden wood to splinters, summons his falchion and shatters his chains. Then he gets to work, carving through the Iron Shepherds until the floor is sticky with spilled blood. It’s not enough - he reaches for the power within him and calls to the sea. 

  From the surrounding forest, he watches a great wave crash over the stone keep. Beside him, perched in a tree, Nott says, “Grow.”

  It feels like victory, like revenge, like triumph. Water swirls over Shady Creek Run, the ocean devouring it all. Nott shoves him out of the tree and he crashes down into the waves.

**“Grow.”** Bodies float on the distant surface of the water as Uk’otoa watches him.

  Fjord wakes up; he forgets.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from “Oceans Cold” by The Devil Makes Three.  
> Fjord's whole warlock thing fascinates me to no end, he's so curious and hungry for knowledge and I! am! interested!  
> This was a bit darker than what I usually write, but as someone who has both vivid dreams and nightmares it was kind of interesting. I'm always curious about the parts of the characters' lives we don't get to see, and I feel like they've got a lot of nightmare fuel even before you bring in Whatever Uk'otoa Has Going On.  
> Anyway I hope this was interesting, leave a comment and let me know what you think!


End file.
